Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thursday
Ruby:
I don’t move. I’m not even sure I breathe, and Josh stays behind me for a beat before his arms slowly loosen. His hands slide to my sides and he turns me carefully until I’m facing him, taking his time with it like the whole argument has knocked the fight out of both of us.
“I want you,” he admits, his voice achingly tender and eyes full of regret. “I want you so badly it’s not even funny.”
I don’t know what to say to that, and Josh doesn’t seem to expect me to. He steps closer instead, lifting both hands to my face and sliding them slowly around my jaw, his palms warm against my cheeks, his thumbs resting beneath my eyes with a gentleness that hurts.
He hurts me. He scorches me and makes me feel alive. He makes me feel myself whilst killing me slowly with how much I feel.
Josh touches me like I’m something precious, like I’m something he’s scared to hold too tightly and even more scared to let go of, and every bit of fight left in me collapses under it.
His eyes move over my face, taking me in so carefully that my throat closes again, and when his forehead lowers towards mine his hands stay exactly where they are, cradling my face between them.
“You have no idea what you’ve done to me,” he murmurs, so close now that the words brush against my mouth. “How fucked I am over you.”
My fingers curl into the front of his hoodie.
Josh’s eyes drop to my lips, and the look on his face makes my heart stumble because there is nothing guarded about him anymore. No joke, no argument, no attempt to drag us back into friendship. Just want. Raw and terrified and so painfully obvious that I can barely stand it.
His thumbs move once over my cheeks, almost absent-mindedly, and I tilt my face into his hands and his breathing changes. He leans closer, slowly, until the tip of his nose brushes mine and his mouth hovers a fraction from my own.
“I know it doesn’t feel it,” he whispers, “but I am yours.” His breath tickles my lips. “I’m always going to be yours. There’s no one else for me, Ruby. Just you.”
The need to kiss him surges so hard it is almost painful, all the weeks of wanting him, wondering about him, trying not to read too much into every touch and every look and every stupid little thing suddenly crashing into this exact second, and I honestly don’t know how I’m supposed to stand here with his hands around my face and his mouth right there without losing my mind.
My fingers fist tighter in his hoodie and I tilt my chin until my lips almost brush his. Josh inhales sharply and the tiny sound sends waves of pleasure through my entire being.
I can feel him holding back, not pulling away, not retreating, just hovering there and the restraint in it makes my whole body ache. I don’t want careful anymore. I don’t want another almost. I’m tired of this thing almost being ours.
I don’t want another second of pretending I can cope with him being this close and not having him.
So I move a little, just enough that my mouth brushes his. The contact is so light I could convince myself I imagined it, except Josh goes completely rigid and my heart detonates against my ribs.
I do it again and this time he starts to meet me—BANG.
The front door slams into the wall and Ewan’s voice tears through the flat. “JOSH? ARE YOU IN?”
Josh jerks backwards, his heel catching the wine bottle and sending it across the carpet before it wedges beneath the radiator. “FUCK.”
Brooke comes in next with her phone in her hand. "We've been ringing you for ages, what the hell—"
And then Abi stumbles in behind her, red-faced, breathing like she's run, and looks between the two of us. Her eyes go to the wine. Then to the phone lit up on the carpet. Then to how close we're stood.
I'm frozen. My face is on fire. I can still feel his breath on my mouth. We were right there. We were about to kiss.
I am so profoundly, physically frustrated that I could pick all three of them up, put them outside, lock the door, and carry on exactly where we left off.
"I—" Abi's voice cracks. "I need help. I think— fuck, I think George’s—" She claps a hand over her own mouth. Then blurts: "His condom is stuck up my fanny!"
Silence. Thick, awful, total silence.
Josh stares at her like she's slapped him. Ewan actually gasps. Brooke turns to me. "You've got to help us get it out."
I find my voice. "Me? Why me?"
Brooke shrugs, helpless. "Dunno," she mutters. "Felt like you'd be good in a crisis."